Why Aura you fighting?

I’ve been saving this Tale from the Club for a rainy day, and though it’s not raining at this particular moment, the week has been wet enough that I think today fits.

A few years ago some of my girlfriends and I wanted to go out, but for whatever reason we didn’t want to make the hourlong drive into San Francisco. Most of the girls in this group lived in Pleasanton, and someone had the bright idea to check out the nightclub that had just opened there. Pleasanton is the suburbs. Aura is the suburbs’ club.

The meat of this story lies in the end of the evening, somewhere a couple of hours into being surrounded by slick shiny floors and over-the-top decorating in a low-ceilinged strip mall unit. Aura is in a strip mall. So is a dentist’s office and a place that sells Philly cheesesteaks, but they weren’t open when we went by. It was everything I hate about the old Studio 8, just darker because it was all stuffed into a shoebox. A strip mall shoebox. This is important. Because we should have just taken note and gone to McDonald’s.

That night we were a fairly large group. We had secured a nice spot right at the base of the DJ’s platform and formed a tight circle. Though it’s impossible to describe, we’ve mastered the exact science of negotiating drink-holders with dancers occupying the same space. We generally aren’t the ones sloshing around our cocktails and I only seldom smack unsuspecting clubbers with my expressive dancing arms. By accident, of course.

While we danced, a line of bad dancing hoe bitches intersected through one end of our circle to the other, making a perfecting international “no” sign of people. I glared at the tail of them as they unapologetically marched by in their cheap-ass shirts. I have no problem with people entering my personal space in the name of negotiating tight crowds, provided that the perpetrators make some sort of acknowledgement at the awkward situation. These girls, however, did nothing. They said nothing, they motioned nothing, they just gave off this air of bitchiness that they warranted no positive feelings from us.

As I shot eye lasers into the back of the last one, one of her friends, whirling around to check on the rest of the Bitch Brigade, caught a glimpse of my face and started to try to front. “WHAT” she mouthed at me, throwing her hands back like she wasn’t some skinny White chick raised in the ‘burbs.

My eyes got wide because, well, people normally don’t try to front at me. I switched into my condescending-cool self and looked back at her snubbing out a calmer “what?” in response.

Then she launched upon us. I saw her brunette bob head in the direction of the other end of my friends’ circle, and I saw P.Hood shove her off, and then I saw a mess of girls clawing at the other. I heard sounds reminiscent of chickens squawking, the kind that only a girl can make. A couple of times I was able to make out the bobbed one as she rattled her head off like an Avenue Q puppet.

It was confusing for a moment. Most of us were Asian. (In fact, we still are!) All of the girls in my group had dark long hair. But in the small group of feuding females, I saw blonde and short hair. The girls that were fighting included nobody from our group. They had turned upon themselves.

My circle had carefully moved away, though still intact, just to take in this very scene. One of the bouncers came up to me and asked, “What’s going on here?”

Flabbergasted, I said “I have no idea. First they just walked through our circle, and then, and then,… I don’t know. They’re, like, fighting themselves.”

“Okay,” he said. Shaking his flashlight, he called his cohorts to the site and they escorted the girls out of the club.

We turned our attention back to each other, but didn’t exchange many words about our first (and only) catfight. Some things don’t deserve extra explanation or discussion.

I stumbled upon your website whilst wondering what happened with Project Michelle. What a nice story about how effective the more subdued and calm “what” response can be in derailing a group of rude tricks. Thanks for sharing!